10 Overused Filming Locations You Never Noticed In Your Favorite Movies And TV Shows

The University of Southern California has always been a big draw for TV and movie directors. Particularly valuable for its look and feel of an Ivy League school while still situated locally within the LA area, various education buildings have served as courtrooms, government buildings, and more than a dozen other college campuses. Middleton Law School from How To Get Away with Murder? Rutger’s in Live Free or Die Hard? Georgetown University in The Girl Next Door? All filmed at USC.

Legally Blonde's Elle Woods may have attended law school, but it certainly wasn’t at Harvard—many of the exterior shots were taken on Trousdale Parkway and the Bovard Administration Building served as Elle’s new dormitory. Filming on campus isn’t limited to education buildings. Dustin Hoffman’s famous fountain scene in The Graduate was taken in front of the Doheny Memorial Library.

Directly across the quad from Hoffman’s fountain is the famous bench from Forrest Gump. The bus stop at the “University of Alabama," where his story is told through flashbacks, is located smack dab in the middle of the USC’s University Park Campus. It’s no wonder the man waited so long for the bus—the bench seen in the film is located on a pedestrian path.